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RADIO 4
CURRENT AFFAIRS
ANALYSIS
FLIRTING WITH FASCISM
TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED DOCUMENTARY
Presenter: Felipe Fernandez- Armesto
Producer: Ingrid Hassler
Editor: Nicola Meyrick
BBC
White City
201 Wood Lane
London
W12 7TS
020 8752 6252
Broadcast Date: 11.07.02
Repeat Date: 14.07.02
Tape Number: TLN227/02VT1028
Duration: 27.42
Taking part in order of appearance:
Henk Wesseling
Professor of Contemporary History at Leiden University in the
Netherlands
Peter Skaarup, MP
Deputy Leader of the Danish People's Party
Pieter Hilhorst
Political journalist and author of the recent play ď HetzeĒ,
Amsterdam
Dr Kirsty Hughes
Senior Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies in
Brussels.
Timothy Garton Ash
Writer and Historian, St Antonyís College, Oxford and The
Hoover Institution, USA
John Gray
Professor of European Thought at the London School of
Economics
Ana Palacio,
Spanish Foreign Secretary, and former MEP for the Partido
Popular
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Let's shelve delicacy. Let's be frank
about what has changed politics most in western Europe in recent times.
Henk Wesseling, Professor of Contemporary History at Leiden University in
the Netherlands, remembers the way things used to be.
WESSELING In 1955 I went to Paris for the first
time and I realised that Iíd never seen a black person in my entire life in the
city of The Hague. I mean, there was not a single, not white Dutch person.
Somebody told me there are ten in Amsterdam.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Well, there are plenty now and not
just in Holland.
SKAARUP Thereís a debate going on in
Denmark saying that we want to protect what is Danish, what is our culture
here. Itís not a thing you could describe as populism. I think you could
describe it as love to your country.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Peter Skaarup, Deputy Leader of the
Danish People's Party, which got 12 % in Denmark's recent general election.
At first glance, it looks like part of a classic nationalist revanche. In France,
Italy, Holland, Austria, similar programmes have re-shaped national elections;
in other ways Ė through regional legislatures or pressure on policy Ė their
influence extends over most of western Europe. Hostility to immigration is the
starting-point of their success. But the common features don't end there.
For a start, they've all emerged from consensus, cohabitation, cosiness Ė the
swamp in which Euro-politics are mired. The party founded by the most
ostentatious of the new populists, the Lijst Pim Fortuyn, is now the second-
biggest in the Dutch legislature with seventeen per cent of the vote. Their
opportunity arose from the voters' disenchantment with a left-right coalition.
Henk Wesseling explains.
WESSELING The result of all this, of the reconciliation, of the
two opposite ends of the political spectrum was a total boredom that came
over the country because the new political leaders, they would always point
out to you like the civil servants do in ďYes MinisterĒ that this is very, very
interesting proposal but unfortunately impossible and in a way that was the
mood in the country. People were terribly terribly bored.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO At this point, enter Pim Fortuyn.
WESSELING He would say, when somebody says
you are an anti-immigration man, he said: ďI anti-immigration, I anti-Moroccan,
I sleep with the Moroccan boys, I like themĒ - and all these things. And
thereís another side to it - is he is a self made millionaire. He has a big house
in Rotterdam which he calls Palazzo di Pietro, where he lives alone with his
two pet dogs, he has a butler, he has a Bentley or Daimler. Now you think
probably about the Dutch as a Calvinist nation. Not at all. People adore it.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Bentley and butler: most Dutch
politicians just have a housewife and bicycle. Before the last Dutch general
election, Fortuyn was shot dead in the street.
By an uncanny coincidence, a new play Ė the story of a deadly attack on a
Fortuyn-like character Ė had just opened in Amsterdam.
HILHORST I was asked to write a play about
multi-culturalism in politics and I was working on it and then I saw an article in a
right-wing newspaper that a look-alike of Fortuyn had been beaten up by
Moroccans and that what the play starts with.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Political journalist Pieter Hilhorst. His
play, Hetze Ė The Smear Ė was widely admired. But he was accused of giving
succour to Fortuynís supporters by exposing conventional politiciansí dirty
tricks.
Fortuyn declared national culture ready for a clean-up, like the litter in the
streets. Despite his vaunted homosexuality, he praised family values. He was
louche and libertarian, but his platform had planks recycled from the traditional
right. Voters liked the mix. Pieter Hilhorst.
HILHORST In the Netherlands if Fortuyn would not
have been killed, my guess was that he would have been the biggest party.
Thereís a strange coalition which backed Fortuyn. Itís part the people who are
threatened, so the people in the lowest strata of society who are living in the
areas where there are problems with crime. So he got the backing of those
groups but also of people higher in society who are fed up with government.
And thereís something which Fortuyn did very well. So we always said thereís
a taboo on talking about crime and thereís a taboo about talking about
immigration. There are certain thing which Iím not allowed to say. People are
trying to demonise me. And that made, of course, debating with him very
difficult because if you criticised his views then he always said youíre trying to
shut me up.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Fortuyn, then, was a snoot-cocker,
who blew away the inhibitions of political correctness. He also offered a
mixture of outrage and hope to the traditional constituency of the extreme
right. But his kind of demagogy has an extra allure, which makes it different
from and perhaps more insidious than the fascism of the past: it's proof
against prosperity; it attracts all sorts of votes Ė even some from immigrants.
Why? Why now? Dr Kirsty Hughes is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for
European Policy Studies in Brussels.
HUGHES I think itís to do with a general discontent
with contemporary politics and this is something that the extreme and populist
right has managed to pick up and exploit and turn into certain xenophobic
political approaches. Itís also a post September 11th effect. There is a greater
nervousness about Islamic religion. Thereís Islamophobia and thatís being
exploited by some parties. But I think itís being exploited in ways that are very
similar to the old extreme right and populist right parties.
SKAARUP We, since 1983, have seen very many
refugees and immigrants coming to Denmark. Itís more exactly from the Middle
East that thereís a lot of people coming here - Palestines, Lebanese, Afghans,
Iraqis, Iranians.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Peter Skaarup of the Danish Peopleís
Party.
SKAARUP Many of them representing a belief
and a way of thinking that is much different compared to what we are used to
here and therefore thereís a clash of cultures, you could say. For instance,
concerning equality where women and men have really, I think, have equality in
Denmark in all ways of living. Thereís a new discussion now because Muslim
people here in this country seem to believe that women should be at home and
not being part of the labour market. So thatís a big concern.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO If this sounds Islamophobic, it's well
attuned to a lot of genuine concerns among ordinary people in the secular,
progressive west Ė defending lifestyle-liberalism against godly orthodoxyís, for
instance; advocating feminism and economic liberalism against supposedly
benighted prejudices; strengthening security against torrents of terrorism;
rejecting immigrants Ė not explicitly as black or brown but as culturally
backward; exalting Danishness, in Peter Skaarup's case, for all he finds best in
Denmark.
SKAARUP I think you can look back on other
periods in history where a country or their culture have been threatened. I
compared it with the Second World War because there you had this
discussion in Denmark, this proudness to be Danish. So itís at these times
where you begin to discuss a way to be Danish.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO In other words, Pieter Skaarup
acknowledges a historical precedent in the Nazi era Ė but not in the way you
might expect. His kind of nationalism, he says, originated in reaction against the
Nazis. The immigrants are threatening Danishness now, just as the invaders
did then.
What makes the new populism so hard to handle is this claim to virtuous
credentials. You can find them Ė or claim to find them Ė further back than the
forties, deep in the western tradition. Pieter Hilhorst in Amsterdam:
HILHORST What Fortuyn did, he was something who
was for the enlightenment. He was an enlightened politician in a sense that he
said: We have certain freedoms, we have certain liberties and we want
everybody to conform to them. So he was against foreigners not because he
was exclusive but because he was an enlightenment politician. And thatís
something which I think is new. Actually they defend the enlightenment against
forces from outside and thatís something which has a much bigger appeal also
from people who are right but who donít want to be called a racist. But they
only say no, we want our values, our enlightenment values defended against
forces, religions like the Islam which are against that. And thatís something
which is a much more modern and therefore much more dangerous political
story. And I think that that story will win from the old Le Pen type of right wing
policies.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO So there is more than one kind of
right-wing populism in Europe today. A new extremism Ė zappy, zeitgeisty, cool
Ė has put down respectable roots and learned the language of the
Enlightenment. It's hard for the old Le Pen-style right to compete, and hard for
the establishment to cope.
If the new populists are really as dangerous as Pieter Hilhorst thinks, it may be
because theyíre wolves in sheep's clothing Ė unrepentant reactionaries in
enlightened disguise Ė or it may be because theyíre streamlined for success in
todayís world, like the government put together by Forza Italia leader, Silvio
Berlusconi in Italy.
The contemporary historian Timothy Garton Ash, of St Antonyís College,
Oxford:
GARTON ASH Itís a mistake to think too much in
terms of the sort of traditional themes of the European right because that
obscures the really novel elements in this kind of politics. Pim Fortuyn, for
example, it seems to me is extremely hard to describe in categories of the
traditional right because heís someone who is arguing for integration into a
modern liberal state. So I wouldnít think that he fits very well. I donít think that
Berlusconi fits very well into a traditional right because Berlusconi is not about
building up a larger state or a stronger state. Heís put together, for example,
very strong elements of economic liberalism which do appeal to a middle class
as Berlusconi has done, but which would not have been found in a traditional
nationalist European right. Many of the movements seem to be quite untypical
and that is their economic liberalism.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Peter Skaarup, too, resists
classification of his party in old-right terms. He talks the new language,
exemplifies the new style.
SKAARUP I donít consider the Danish Peopleís
Party as an especially right wing party. I think that itís very old fashioned to
talk about right wing in these days.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Yes, weíre into a new politics.
SKAARUP Right and I think, if you ask a Danish
voter voting for the Peopleís Party here, he wonít consider himself as a right
wing person. And you can say, concerning economics where you usually also
discuss right wing as liberal, we have a policy that is in the middle. We are
protecting the welfare system, the welfare society. So I think itís a whole new
agenda. We are still a liberal country, still a tolerant country, people are still
welcome to come here. The thing is that we have to tighten up a welfare
system because itís being taken advantage of by people coming from
especially the Middle East - there we have to change this so we can still be
this tolerant and liberal country.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO These are truly remarkable claims.
Can you really have a society which is liberal inside barricaded borders; a
welfare state which discriminates against some residents; an enlightenment
which is exclusive; toleration in which some people are targets?
These sound like contradictions to me, but Peter Skaarup would see them as a
modern synthesis. We know the new parties are wised-up and wired into some
of the latest trends. Modern, however, doesn't mean moderate. John Gray is
Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics.
GRAY Just as many of the fascist
movements and indeed even some aspects of the Nazi regime can be seen
as radically modern in that they implemented what were then the most
advanced theories of political economy and economic policy, they embraced,
what were then, the most advanced technologies and they saw themselves
as carving out a new kind of future. Just so, at the start of the 21st century,
many of the far right movements in Europe, embrace the new technologies of
the internet and of information technology. They embrace globalisation and
world wide trade and movement of capital and they understand better, I think
in some ways than the parties of the centre understand, that economic
globalisation has casualties even in the richest countries.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO So thereís this thread of
modernisation binding them to the kinds of movements we saw in the 30s.
Theyíre also appealing to the economically excluded as those parties were in
the 30s.
GRAY Thatís correct.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Thereís a lot of common agenda
here - nationalistic , anti-immigrant and thereís a strong authoritarian
tendancy in a lot of these movements. So it sounds to me as though they
quack like a duck. I mean, why donít we call them, you know, the 30s
returning?
GRAY In contrast with European far right
movements in the inter-war period which typically aimed to overthrow or
destroy democratic government where it existed, the far right parties at the
start of the 21st century aim to shape the agenda of democratic government.
So their strategy is either by becoming part of national government, as theyíve
done in Austria and the Netherlands, or by having a decisive influence on
parties in national government as theyíve done in Denmark, to compel the
centrist parties to shape their policies in response to the electoral momentum
which the far right parties have gained.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Only last week, under the influence
of Peter Skaarup's party, Denmark introduced the most radical immigration
legislation in Europe so far, withdrawing asylum seekers' entitlements to
housing and welfare, denying the right of entry to spouses and children.
As John Gray indicated, this is how the new populism works: influencing the
establishment, tugging at governments. Even in Britain and other countries
which don't yet have electorally successful parties of the new right,
mainstream politicians try to mimic or pre-empt their appeal. Does Kirsty
Hughes think this is the right strategy?
HUGHES I think theyíre making a very serious
mistake by going in that direction because I donít think youíll placate the
extreme right or the populists by adopting their policies. You wonít take the
issue of the agenda.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO So what would be your prescription
for mainstream parties in Europe reacting to this phenomenon?
HUGHES They have to show much more
courage and leadership than theyíve shown so far. I think so far weíve seen a
mixture of cowardice and opportunism.
PALACIO Itís not a matter of civilised right and
populists. Itís not the threat from the right. I insist itís the threat from
disenchanted or confused citizens that are lured by the right populists
nowadays. So what I think it is that we have to address their problems not
the populists. They will always be there.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Thatís the new Spanish Foreign Minister,
Ana Palacio, who, until this week was a Euro-MP representing the Partido
Popular, Spainís centre -right government party.
It sounds as if it's not the mainstream parties' fault but ours. The voters have
put populists in power. And Ana Palacio sees the potential benefits of a
system which drives moderates and extremists into collaboration, as in Joerg
Haider's Austria.
PALACIO What we are seeing in Austria, for
instance, is that the government is keeping absolutely in track with all other
governments in Europe. So we have to admit that -now with a perspective of
some now nearly two years of government- the results are there.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO This is a remarkable turnaround,
because when Joerg Haider's Freedom Party first joined the Austrian
government, the EU responded furiously, introducing sanctions. If Ana Palacio
is right about Austria today, it's surely because the populist strategy has
worked: Europe generally has moved to the right in response.
Yet hope persists that extremists can be domesticated, even emasculated, by
being given a share of government. The Dutch establishment wants a similar
solution in Holland, smothering them in boredom. Professor Henk Wesseling.
WESSELING Now whatís going on now - that is the
normalisation of whatís called the Lijst Pim Fortuyn. So theyíre just doing the
same, boring negotiations week on, week on, week on as we have always
had. Now what most people expect and I think what many people hope is
that these people from the Lijst Fortuyn will see how difficult it is to govern the
country, see all the complications, all the compromises that then at a certain
moment there will be a crisis, will be new elections, the party will, the Lijst
Fortuyn will have fallen victim to its own disintegration and we will go back to
normalcy. Thatís what the political elite wants.
FERNANDEZ -ARMESTO This is a dangerous strategy. The populists
could be strengthened by power. Even if they soften and submerge, their
influence will linger in a Europe they are helping to re-shape. Speaking for his
own country, Denmark, Peter Skaarup is frank about the hit-list of what they
want changed.
SKAARUP We donít want to be betrayed by people
who transfer power from Denmark to Brussels, betrayed by people who agree
or at least maybe they donít say that but they in practice agree with having a
multi-ethnic society. Thatís being seen as portrayal from the leading
politicians and people want something new.
PALACIO This is fear, this is fear in many cases.
FERNANDEZ - ARMESTO Ana Palacio, Spainís new Foreign Minister.
.
PALACIO When you see the percentage of French
voters that vote for Le Pen, then you see that behind this vote there is
something different from xenophobia or just being against Europe. No, itís
much worse. I think what they are is is citizens that feel that the institutions
that should represent them, that should listen to their real concerns are not
doing so. The European level has been playing around without paying notice
to security and security related to illegal immigration was very high on the
concerns of the citizens. So what citizens do not understand is that if there is
a real problem there, we donít tackle it.
FERNANDEZ -ARMESTO The European Unionís recent Seville summit
was an attempt to respond. Kirsty Hughes.
HUGHES If you look at the Seville conclusions,
what they do is spend about six pages on how you try and stop illegal
immigration, how you try and tighten European borders. And in those six
pages there was about one sentence on: We must do something nonetheless
to promote anti-discrimination policies and to meet our responsibilities under
the Geneva Convention. Thereís been perhaps a complacency in Brussels
on this because you certainly havenít seen people like Romano Prodi or any
of the other European commissioners getting up and making strong and
passionate political speeches defending human rights, defending the asylum
process in Europe. So, I think, in terms of the rhetoric and to some extent in
terms to the direction of policy, there is a pandering to the extreme right.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO - and a good job too, some say.
Austriaís Joerg Haider has been reported as congratulating the Union on
copying a stance for which he says he was 'labelled as a racist and fascist'.
The extremists, then, have succeeded in changing the agenda on
immigration. So far, however, they haven't been so successful in changing the
other big nationalist bete-noire, the European Union. The establishment
seems willing to sacrifice the immigrants, but not the Eurocrats.
Now there's an important law of political science to remember here: every
integrative process provokes a fissile reaction: Europeanisation, therefore,
stimulates nationalisms. In these circumstances, can the European project be
kept safe from the rise of the right? Timothy Garton-Ash.
GARTON ASH I do think that what we have achieved in the
European Union and in the ever closer co-operation of European states and
peoples is seriously under threat and that the combination of this sort of
challenge with the challenge of the enlargement of the European Union, could
put the whole show on the skids.
FERNANDEZ -ARMESTO And, of course, this new agenda is very
hostile to enlargement anyway. So is enlargement definitely out of the picture
for the future?
GARTON ASH No, I donít think it is because it is the big
project and everyone knows that this is what we have to do. But I think it
means that enlargement will be enormously bad tempered because voters
who already believe that Moroccan or Turkish or Pakistani immigrants are
taking their jobs will think that Hungarians and Czechs, and Poles will take
even more of their jobs and will also think that having been bled dry in other
respects, theyíre going to be bled again for enlargement. So that I think it will
increase the resistance to the eastward enlargement to the EU.
FERNANDEZ -ARMESTO So a lot of the established political
landscape of Europe is feeling the rumblings of seismic change. Integration
is subverting the kind of multi-culturalism we have known, as immigrants take
compulsory lessons in the language, heritage, and allegiance-rites of their
hosts. Euro-enlargement is under a shadow, the whole European project
under a cloud. Consensus and cohabitation are in the cauldron.
John Gray of the LSE identifies those responsible.
GRAY At present, both the centre parties
and even more the European Institutions, have exhibited a mixture of
opportunistic retreat and bureaucratic rigidity. They still hold to the belief that
the genuine issues that the far right is exploiting for its regressive goals will
somehow be resolved by everyone becoming richer. But the far right does
not need large scale economic dislocation, does not need large scale
unemployment to make headway. So, I fear that a mixture of rigidity and
complacency is opening Europe to further advance of far right parties which is
distinctly worrying.
FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Timothy Garton Ash sees some of
the same dangers, while reconnoitring routes of escape.
GARTON ASH This kind of politics will not go away
on its own just because the European economy picks up a bit or this or that
party comes in or out of power. I think it needs a real strategy by European
leaders, a wholly welcoming and embracing attitude to immigration with, of
course quotas, with of course border controls. Every immigration country has
that. America has it in spades, Australia, Canada. Itís nonsense to say
otherwise. But a welcome to those who do come- legally. Secondly,
addressing the structural problem of unemployment and thirdly, a kind of
rethinking of the politics of the traditional democratic right.
.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO As a grand strategy, that is hard to
quarrel with: but what about the tactics along the way? Welcoming immigrants
means tolerating cultural pluralism Ė a policy which the nationalists will not
endorse and on which established politicians seem willing to compromise. The
democratic mainstream is re-thinking its policies, aping or assimilating the
extremists rather than resisting them. Thatís not the way forward, according to
Kirsty Hughes.
HUGHES What I think we might see and whatís
of greatest concern is that if we carry on going down this path of following the
more populists policies in terms of immigration and anti-asylum seeker rhetoric,
that you will see a lot more potential for ethnic conflict and ethnic difficulties
within the European Union. You canít stop the EU being multi-cultural - it is. All
the different people are here already. So what youíve got to do is push forward
the policies that the EU does have on anti-discrimination. And it has a range of
policies on anti-discrimination in terms of race, in terms of ethnic group, in
terms of sexual orientation, age, disability. Itís got to push forward those
policies and try and manage the diversity that there is within the European
Union if itís to be a stable beacon in the world as it actually wants to be. If it
becomes unstable, ridden with conflict and ethnic difficulties, then itís going to
have great difficulties in developing at all.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO Europe is in for a spell of designer-
demagogy which thrives in affluence and ennui and gift-wraps the agenda of
extremism in the language of Enlightenment. To confront it, mainstream
politicians need to engage with the voters and argue against the noisy little
men, with their nationalism and narrow-mindedness. For if the agenda of
extremists becomes the message of the mainstream weíll be in a new kind of
consensus, which will again consign voters to frustration and deprive them of
choice: cohabitation resumed Ė only this time with dangerous bedfellows.
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